The capitalist newspapers, from Rech
down to Russkaya
Volya, are carrying on a most shameless campaign of
lies and slander concerning the passage through Germany of
myself and thirty other emigrants.

The capitalist newspapers shamelessly lie when they assort or
insinuate that we enjoyed certain inadmissible or unusual
favours from the German Government, a government which we
consider just as predatory, just as criminal, as all the other
capitalist governments who are carrying on the present war.

Rich men having “connections” with high-ranking officials of the
tsarist monarchy, men like the liberal professor Kovalevsky,
friend of Milyukov and Co., have been constantly negotiating
with the German Government through the agency of the tsarist
Russian Government with a view to arranging for an exchange of
Russians captured by the Germans, and Germans captured by the
Russians.

Why then should emigrants, who have been compelled to live
abroad because of their struggle against the tsar, not have the
right to arrange for an exchange of Russians for Germans
without the government’s aid?

Why has the government of Milyukov and Co. not admitted into
Russia Fritz Platten, the Swiss socialist, who travelled with us
and who had negotiated the agreement with the German Government
concerning the exchange?

The government lies when it spreads rumours that Platten is a
friend of the Germans. This is sheer slander. Platten is the
friend of the workers and the enemy of the capitalists of
all countries.

The capitalists lie when they circulate rumours that we are for
a separate peace with the Germans, that we conferred or wanted
to confer in Stockholm with those German socialists who sided
with their own government.

This is a libellous lie. We did not participate and shall not
participate in any conferences with such socialists. We look
upon the socialists of all countries who are helping their
own respective capitalists to carry on this criminal war as
traitors to the cause of socialism.

Only those socialists are our friends who, like Karl
Liebknecht, condemned to hard labor by the predatory German
Government, rise against their own capitalists.

We do not want a separate peace with Germany, we want peace for
all nations, we want the victory of the workers of
all countries over the capitalists of all
countries.

The Russian capitalists are lying about us and slandering us,
just as the German capitalists are slandering Liebknecht. The
capitalists lie when they say that we want discord and enmity
between the workers and the soldiers.

It is not true! We want the workers and the soldiers to
unite. We want to make it clear to the members
of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies that it is
these Soviets that must wield full state
power.

The capitalists are slandering us. They have sunk so low in
their shamelessness that not a single bourgeois newspaper has
reprinted from Izvestia
our report concerning our journey and the decision of the
Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies. [See: How we
Arrived]

Every worker and every soldier knows his Soviet of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. It was to the Executive
Committee of this Soviet that we made our report the day after
our arrival. The report appeared in
Investia.[1]
Why is it
that not a single capitalist paper has reprinted this
report?

Because these papers are spreading lies and slander and are
afraid that our report to the Executive Committee will expose
the deceivers.

Why is it that not a single paper has reprinted the
decision of the Executive Committee concerning our
report, a decision which was published in the same issue of
Izvestia?

Because this decision nails the lies of the capitalists and
their newspapers, in that it demands that the government take
steps for the return of the emigrants.

Izvestia has published a protest against Trotsky’s
arrest by the English; it has published a letter by Zurabov
exposing Milyukov’s lies; it has also published a telegram from
Martov on the same subject.

Soldiers and sailors! Do not believe the lies and slander of the
capitalists! Expose the deceivers, who are trying to suppress
the truth published in Izvestia!